How many actual and active TAPCIS users are still out there? 2nd try ...

[heinz57g]

of to the next try - but why can one not DELETE entire mssgs?

[Lindsey]

well, i hope i get this right: trying to find out through this poll how many of you still use TAPCIS for their daily email, personal and work.
Not I; I don't use my CompuServe mailbox any more. I use TAPCIS when I want to access my archived message files. It's a wonderful tool, but the system it was designed to support is no longer so wonderful.

--Lindsey

[heinz57g]

well, i hope i get this right: trying to find out through this poll how many of you still use TAPCIS for
their daily email, personal and work.

please note that this means real internet email messages both out and in, not counting
SPAM, and not counting, but at the last point, insider games like DIXONARY or DUNGEON.

multiple choices make sense only on GAMES plus WELL UNDER 10 MAILS / MONTH, for example.

greetings - heinz -

[Lindsey]

of to the next try - but why can one not DELETE entire mssgs?
I think I answered your message while you were in the process of wiping it out.

As to why you can't delete entire messages: What can I say but that that's the way this particular message board software works. (Note that deleting a message would break the thread chain in a way that the software may not be able to compensate for. You have to leave some sort of place holder to prop up the structure, even if it's only a "This message has been deleted.")

--Lindsey

[heinz57g]

well, the poll is now on another mssg. hope it worked this time.

re your '' ... but the system it was designed to support is no longer so wonderful ... '' means
actually what?

the forums? you sure are right. but for email, CIS is still there, CLASSIC is supposed to be there for
years, TAPCIS works well as always incl all functions, and last not least there is the TAPCIS forum ...

just trying to pull up spirits - heinz -

PS: any way to move these entries over to the new thread, and/or close this one? should be all in one.

PPS: i thought after setting up the poll i would get an option to see, change and revise it, but it seems not. i forgot one important selection point: ''Used to be, but have given up 2005/2006 for good''. can one still add this somehow?

[Lindsey]

re your '' ... but the system it was designed to support is no longer so wonderful ... '' means actually what?
It means what it says: Forget forums, they're not accessible with TAPCIS anyway, and in any case, people expect more from message boards (embedded links, attached pictures) than HMI (or TAPCIS) was designed to support.

Yes, you can still use TAPCIS for CompuServe e-mail, but since Classic mail doesn't provide very effective spam filtering, not to mention things like online address books and redirection, it's no longer up to prevailing standards.

--Lindsey

[Lindsey]

There's no "No longer using it for new messages" option, but that's where my vote falls.

--Lindsey

[heinz57g]

i guess when you are right you are right, the spam issue is a major one, online addrs is, to a part only,
covered with TAPCIS. redirection only with workarounds (pickup with POP3, then filtering, then
distributing). this together with TAPCIS gives a workable solution, but i guess you have to be a
hardliner. i still see a lot of advantages to TAPCIS, but this to a large degree refers to my special conditions.

greetings - heinz -

[heinz57g]

lindsey, see my other post, i wanted to incliude this option, but cannot afterwards, apperently.

how can i totally cancel the VOTE part and set i up anew? it will anyhow take weeks before sensible results will accumulate.

a more private question to both you and judy comes to mind: how many hours does a day have for you and your families?
it seems like 50+. tell me how you do this.

greetings - heinz -

[davidh]

TAPCIS was one of my favorite programs ever. I do not now have any Compuserve account and did not save message files from TAPCIS when I closed my Compuserve account, so I have no use for TAPCIS now.

I've been trying to figure out why I still miss TAPCIS program. Is it just because of nostalgia of being associated in my mind with the old Compuserve forums? Perhaps so. And the nostalgia because of TAPCIS being a non-GUI console program, the type of programs I "grew up" with on PDP-8's hooked to teletypes and VT-100/VT-52 terminals.

On the other hand, I think I liked it so much because it works so well with the keyboard. Perhaps there are some (Windows) GUI programs that have keyboard interfaces that would allow you to do EVERYTHING in the program with the KEYBOARD, but I've never actually done so. And I'm not sure there really is such a program that could be controlled safely by fast touch-typing on the keyboard? Maybe if you have a really fast computer? With a GUI program, I'm always afraid I'll be typing a response into the wrong dialog box. This problem seems to happen to me many times, esp. when typing my ID and password into Yahoo or Google webmail.

I was able to make TAPCIS work to read POP3 mail, by using a MTA (Mail Transport Agent) from an add-on to the (German) XP (CrossPoint) email program, but I did not have the ambition to try to write software that would allow creation and posting of email with TAPCIS using the SMTP side of the same MTA, so I gave up.

I think that development even of CrossPoint may also have slowed to a stop by now? Some of the old email programs (even CrossPoint) may just have a hard time doing some of the things that become increasingly important now, such as SMTP authentication, HTML rendering, SSL encryption, etc.

I've used Thunderbird email somewhat on my wife's computer and like it, but want to keep using my old computers until they break and I'm concerned that Thunderbird will become so bloated that I'd have to buy a new computer to run the updates of it (esp. security updates). So I'm debating whether and when to switch from my current email program (Foxmail) to Pegasus (or maybe MUTT?) which seems to put the most emphasis on security, speed, and compatibility.

David H.

[heinz57g]

david, tks for this one, doesnt make me feel quite that lonely ... more detailed comment to follow.

greetings - heinz -

[Judy G. Russell]

why can one not DELETE entire mssgs?I merged the two threads for you. You can't delete entire messages because someone may be answering your message (as Lindsey did) while you were editing, so only sysops can do that. You could have edited it to say [Message deleted - check other thread], but not deleted the placeholder.

[Judy G. Russell]

I don't use Tapcis anymore. It only works for CServe and I closed out my account there. All I was getting was spam anyway...

[Lindsey]

how can i totally cancel the VOTE part and set i up anew? it will anyhow take weeks before sensible results will accumulate.
I wouldn't bother to do that. Just manually tally those if you decide you want to post final results at some point.

a more private question to both you and judy comes to mind: how many hours does a day have for you and your families?
it seems like 50+. tell me how you do this.
Hahahahahahaha!

--Lindsey

[Lindsey]

I've been trying to figure out why I still miss TAPCIS program.
Well, I don't know about you, but I miss it because it did just about everything I could have wanted it to do, and did it reliably and without my having to think too hard about how to do it. Or at least it did before I moved to XP and lost a healthy chunk of the keyboard shortcuts. :(

--Lindsey

[Lindsey]

You can't delete entire messages because someone may be answering your message (as Lindsey did) while you were editing, so only sysops can do that.
Oh--yeah, I forgot that sysops have the ability to make messages completely disappear!

--Lindsey

[Judy G. Russell]

Hey, we gotta have SOME superpowers, or it's no fun being a sysop any more!

[davidh]

david, tks for this one, doesnt make me feel quite that lonely ... more detailed comment to follow.

greetings - heinz -

Perhaps it was fortunate for me that your message happened to make me think about whether it was worthwhile for me to change my email program again.

While thinking about whether I really wanted to do the work to change from Foxmail 4.x to Pegasus or whatever (because of the more secure HTML rendering and more standardized mailbox format in Pegasus), I decided to take another look at Foxmail to see if there was some way to stop it from always defaulting to MS Internet Explorer (DLL's or whatever) to render HTML. I sort of accidentally found a button to click with a two item menu one of which was to view HTML with MY default browser (Firefox) instead of ITS default browser (MS IE). I've probably been using the program for at least 4 years and never found it before (or I forgot about it, or maybe Nick told me about it and I forgot?). I looked in the HELP and the feature seemed not to be there, so I can't blame the whole thing on my stupidity. So since Pegasus is somewhat harder to configure, I'll probably now stick with Foxmail, instead of switching.

David H.

[dgermann]

Hi--

Yeah, the spam thing is a big pain.

So far I am still on Tapcis for my e-mail, although I may soon switch to retrieving it with Evolution or Mozilla under my new linux setup. Still need to check that out and see how to set up my couple of mailing lists I send to. That will have to wait till I have time to play around with it a bit.

If I go that route, I will probably try to move my CI$ subscription down to the $3.95 per month/100 minutes level, since I will have little or no need to actually ever log on. Does anybody know if that option is still available?

Wasn't sure how to answer your poll about the number of e-mail messages. If you count the spam, I am well over the 500/mo!

[davidh]

So far I am still on Tapcis for my e-mail, although I may soon switch to retrieving it with Evolution or Mozilla under my new linux setup. Still need to check that out and see how to set up my couple of mailing lists I send to. That will have to wait till I have time to play around with it a bit.

If I go that route, I will probably try to move my CI$ subscription down to the $3.95 per month/100 minutes level, since I will have little or no need to actually ever log on. Does anybody know if that option is still available?


As you mention, it would be cheaper to switch to the payasyougo plan ($2.95/mo. + whatever) or lite plan ($4.95/mo. + whatever) in the long run.

However, there used to be people in the UNIX and/or LINUX forums on Compuserve that ran MS-DOS TAPCIS on LINUX on x86 (INTEL PC) compatible CPU's using DOSEMU. Perhaps some of them are still on Compuserve forums and could give advice? I never did it myself.

If by chance you have large message files in TAPCIS that you want to import into Thunderbird/Mozilla, you might need to buy a utility like ForMorph or ForKeeps, if it's still available.

Or you could install TAPCIS on LINUX with DOSEMU , only to browse existing messages instead of sending or receiving new ones, if you so desired. The advatange, if any, of doing THIS would be that your communication hardware (modem, etc.) would not have to be MS-DOS hardware compatible. Of course, in such a case, you'd probably send and receive future new messages via your Compuserve Classic POP3/SMTP account (see POPMAIL.PDF wherever) or another ISP mail account.

David H.

[heinz57g]

doug, you must have overlooked this:

>> this means real internet email messages both out and in, not counting SPAM, and not counting,
but at the last point, insider games like DIXONARY or DUNGEON.

if you did already enter 500+ counting spam, let us know, so we can correct it (can we, judy, lindsey?). it would make no sense at all inclucing spam, becasue we ALL would be over 500. i am sure i had days with 100+.

all others who commented, pls dont forget to vote too!

greetings - heinz -

[Mike]

I don't use TAPCIS for email, but I still work in one forum that's accessible via TAPCIS. However, most of the time, I use the web view, and only fire up TAPCIS a couple of times a month.

[Wayne Scott]

I just signed on Tapcis for the first time in a couple or more months. I had 171 headers to delete and several hundred messages to delete.
None was from anyone personal. About 10% were from senders with whom I have done business. The rest were pure spam. Of the spam about 1/4 were porn sites.

Wayne

[dgermann]

David H--

That sounds like a good thing. But I have never gotten dosemu to work. Perhaps I'd ought to check with the CIS linux folks....

Then again, since it is a plain text file, I could still open and read what is there via a text editor like gedit.

Thanks for the idea, David.

heinz--

Naw, just leave it like it is. I did miss that line. But I probably still am over 500 in a month these days. Thanks for asking, heinz!

[Judy G. Russell]

That's exactly why I closed my CServe account, Wayne. Not worth keeping it open for the trash that comes through.

[Julian Hall]

Hullo, I've just registered with the Tapcis forum. I've been sending out between 500 and 600 compuserve emails per month from the UK using Tapcis 6 for years. I generate the Tapcis code by programme and the whole system works extremely well.

For some reason, I was never able to register as a Tapcis user, having purchased the software, so have got rather out of touch. I've never really used Tapcis for forums (maybe once or twice) but it's invaluable for sending mail. (I don't use Tapcis for receiving mail, however.)

I am now rather concerned about the future of Tapcis for mail. If Compuserve no longer uses forums, how long is Tapcis likely to continue to work for outgoing mail?

I've tried to search the FAQs etc. regarding this, but without success. Can anyone hazard a realistic forecast? Also, are there any equivalent Internet facilities available in that event that allow people to generate code to send messages automatically - e.g. Eudora??

Perhaps someone can enlighten me on this? Sorry if I'm asking a question that has already been answered.

Julian Hall

[Judy G. Russell]

Julian, there's no way of knowing for sure how long Compuserve will continue its classic mail service (which is what makes Tapcis possible). The short answer is, as long as it makes money for them. And none of us has access to their data to know how long that might be.

[davidh]

Hullo, I've just registered with the Tapcis forum. I've been sending out between 500 and 600 compuserve emails per month from the UK using Tapcis 6 for years. I generate the Tapcis code by programme and the whole system works extremely well.

For some reason, I was never able to register as a Tapcis user, having purchased the software, so have got rather out of touch. I've never really used Tapcis for forums (maybe once or twice) but it's invaluable for sending mail. (I don't use Tapcis for receiving mail, however.)

I am now rather concerned about the future of Tapcis for mail. If Compuserve no longer uses forums, how long is Tapcis likely to continue to work for outgoing mail?

I've tried to search the FAQs etc. regarding this, but without success. Can anyone hazard a realistic forecast? Also, are there any equivalent Internet facilities available in that event that allow people to generate code to send messages automatically - e.g. Eudora??

Perhaps someone can enlighten me on this? Sorry if I'm asking a question that has already been answered.

Julian Hall

I assume by "generate code" you might mean TAPCIS macros.

I have the Windows email programs Thunderbird and Pegasus installed on my PC, but I happen to use another less-well-known email program for Windows. Still, when I tried to find out something about macros in Pegasus and Thunderbird, I could not find anything. Maybe somebody else knows more about this? I would think that it's hard to find out about almost any Windows program whether it's possible or convenient to do all the tasks one would like exclusively thru the keyboard. Furthermore, unless the PC has a lot of CPU power, the keyboard responsiveness in a GUI application might be sluggish for a fast touch-typist. For that reason, there still may be a demand for console (non-GUI) applications, and not just in email either. OpenXP email program is still being developed as a console program (for DOS, Windows, Linux) and apparently supports recording and playing of keyboard macros. Hopefully somebody else can recommend other macro-capable alternatives.

David H.

[Julian Hall]

Thanks for that. I'm not sure if 'Tapcis macros' correctly describes the code my system generates. The task is really simple. My system generates individual Rich Text files which are sent as attachments to different internet addresses. If the attachments were all the same, they could of course be sent as a single broadcast message - but they aren't.

So, as well as generating the Rich Text files themselves, my system also generates the code that Tapcis itself would generate if one were to 'tell' Tapcis to send the files to the different addresses. I guess that is where a Tapcis 'macro' could be used, but my data is constantly changing, so I don't use this approach.

I have looked at the Eudora web site, and there are things called MAPI messages that may do what I want. However, I have so far been unable to download a trial version of Eudora. I'll keep trying.

In the meantime, Tapcis works brilliantly, albeit at only 56Kbps, and I'll probably stick with that as long as possible. But I don't want to be faced with the task of reprogramming in a hurry, so had better check out the alternatives, including the ones you mentioned.

Julian Hall.

[davidh]

Sounds like the system you are using required some custom coding.

I don't know if "The Bat" email program would handle your needs without custom programming or not. However it appears to be an "industrial strength" email program. For example, it will allow one to maintain a full blown mailing list with merely a POP3 email account. Whether it would allow one to maintain multiple mailing lists on a single POP3 account , I don't know? But is sounds like this latter is closer to what you want to do. Might be worth taking a look at. I believe that it is shareware.

David H.

P.S. Google mail accounts can be used as 100% free POP3 email accounts provided one's email program supports SSL encryption with POP3 (many programs do). I have been doing this for a couple years. There are no ads in my google POP3 email. I only see google ads when I try to read my google mail via the web. google mail is very flexible, with more options that I'd care to explain <smile>.

In my case, I don't even need SSL with POP3 support in my email program , because I forward my google mail to my ISP (earthlink) and POP it from the earthlink POP3 server.

[Julian Hall]

It's taken me a while, but I have obtained a trial version of 'The Bat!' email program and am pleased to say that this serves the purpose. It's amazingly simple to generate a file of command lines which send out the different attachments to different people. It works a treat and I'm very impressed with the package in general, so - thanks for the tip, David. I would certainly recommend it to anyone migrating from Tapcis, if they are faced with that necessity.

I did try using MAPI routines originally, which should work in theory. In practice, however, you need more programming expertise than I can muster, as well as Visual Basic 6 or C++, which I don't have.

Best regards,
Julian Hall

[davidh]

It's taken me a while, but I have obtained a trial version of 'The Bat!' email program and am pleased to say that this serves the purpose. It's amazingly simple to generate a file of command lines which send out the different attachments to different people. It works a treat and I'm very impressed with the package in general, so - thanks for the tip, David. I would certainly recommend it to anyone migrating from Tapcis, if they are faced with that necessity.

I did try using MAPI routines originally, which should work in theory. In practice, however, you need more programming expertise than I can muster, as well as Visual Basic 6 or C++, which I don't have.

Best regards,
Julian Hall Glad to hear you got good results. I've never tried the Bat program myself, but the specs did seem pretty impressive when I read them.
I read somewhere that some mail servers used to block email generated by Pegasus and also by the The Bat, presumably because the email server operators were ignorant or lazy and did not care that both are legitimate email programs that were sometimes unfortunately used by spammers.

David H.